What Really Matters
by TracyT
Summary: Episode Tag to Death Knell


Title: What Really Matters

Author: TracyT

Rating: K

Summary: Episode tag to Death Knell

Spoilers: Death Knell

Pairing: Sam/Jack

Category: Hurt/Comfot

Archive: Yes, Please

Feedback to: 

Author's note: Many thanks to Audrey and Erica for beta reading for me! Your help was invaluable!

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to MGM and TPTB at Bridge. I just borrowed them for a while.

I've been a career soldier all my adult life. Even counting my early, short stint of retirement, the military is all I've ever known. I've done body sweeps after battles many times. The acrid smell of death and destruction that rises like a cloud and hangs over a battlefield is familiar to me, the swarms of insects, drawn by the smell of blood, that come in to feed on the dead and dying. The almost eerie quiet while my ears ring from the unrelenting noise of the previous battle, I've lived that before. Although I wasn't here for this battle, I've known this duty, walking a battlefield looking for survivors, looking for my men, looking for friends.

This time it's Carter.

"How could anyone survive this?" Reynolds had said, and he was right. Alpha site was virtually destroyed. Riley had set the self-destruct and stayed with it to make sure it went off. We found several bodies near the tree line.

Not Carter.

When we found Jacob I hoped it meant we'd find Carter, too, but he didn't know where she was. He said, "I don't even know if she's still alive." That's when a fist reached into my chest and began to squeeze and it hasn't let up since. It's been three days now.

Anubis' "Super Soldier" was after Carter and it wouldn't let up until it had her. It may have already tracked her down, depending on how badly she was injured in the blast. She'd do her best to outrun it, and I had faith it wouldn't take her down easily, but so far none of the survivors that came out of the blast have emerged unscathed.

I wonder how badly she's been hurt and remind myself she's barely over a pretty severe concussion she got on the Prometheus. At the thought that fist squeezes a little tighter.

Teal'c has been completely silent as we search the area, an indication of how worried he is, too.

Besides Carter, there are sixty-three men missing from the SGC. Sixty-three colleagues we may never see alive again, and I'm sickened by the devastation. However, with no words between us, Teal'c and I are clear on our mission. We're here to find Sam.

We've found some footprints that could be hers. Teal'c says they are.

"O'Neill." Teal'c has stopped and is pointing at something. Blood trail, on a bush, down a path. Beside it, large footprints. The 'Super Soldier', that's what Sam named it. I call it the SS, but that stands for several things in my book.

We follow the blood spatter down the path, and the droplets get larger. Teal'c silently grabs my arm. I follow the direction of his gaze. I see a leg sticking out from behind a tree. A leg wearing fatigues.

That fist has just about cut my breath off at that point. At once hoping it's her, and praying it's not we rush to the tree.

It's Lieutenant Jenkins. He made it this far before he bled out. He's only about twenty-five.

Feeling a certain amount of guilt at the relief I feel that this body is not Carter, I radio Reynolds and let him know where to find Jenkins.

Teal'c and I move on.

General Hammond radios to let us know they are sending an UAV through to do an aerial sweep of the area. They've manned it with a missile they hope will take the SS out.

It's a beautiful, sunny day here. Reminds me of Minnesota in the summertime. Birds singing, lots of flowers and trees, and I'm once again struck, as I have so many times before, how life just carries on after so much devastation. Shouldn't all this come to a halt, however briefly, after so many people lost their lives? While Carter is fighting for hers? How can things seem so peaceful and serene?

Teal'c motions upward with his staff weapon, and I hear the drone of the UAV. I hope it finds its target and destroys the son-of-a-bitch, but as we watch it's shot down and we hear the crash.

I radio the General to let him know what happened. Teal'c and I head in the direction of the crash. Not much hope the SS will stay put, but at least we know where it was when it shot down the UAV.

We come to a stream and find the SS's footprints again. We cross and head into an open field, when, from the direction of the crash site we hear an explosion.

The fist lets up for a moment. God, it's Carter, it has to be. Then that fist clamps down again, hard, and Teal'c and I begin to run.

It's Carter all right, and that thing is bearing down on her. She's not moving, dammit. She's just letting it advance on her. Teal'c and I both start to fire and it seems to break her out of her immobility. She makes it behind a pile of rocks and I work my way around to her position.

"Carter, I need the..." Before I can finish she's handed the weapon to me. I have to shoot the son-of-a-bitch twice before it finally goes down.

I toss the modified TER to Teal'c and tell him to cover us.

"Is it...? Sam asks, looking up at me.

"Yeah, he's dead." Making sure, I turn toward Teal'c. "Right, Teal'c, he's dead?' Teal'c kicks it a couple times in the shoulder and nods to me.

I turn back to Carter. "Yeah, he's dead." Sam merely nods, then lowers herself to the ground.

I wait a few moments, and when she doesn't move, I say, "You wanna get up?"

She shakes her head and says quietly, "I just need to rest for a minute." Her words scare the hell out of me. That leg looks bad, and her pretty face is cut and bruised, but it's the lifeless look in her eyes and voice that really scares me. I slump down next to her and watch her for a moment. God, this has been a close call. I nearly lost her. She just sits there, her breathing a bit labored, that dead look in her eyes, and suddenly I don't give a damn about the regs. General Hammond can bust me down to Airman for all I care.

"C'mere." I put an arm around her and draw her close. Her head is heavy as it lies against my shoulder. I do this as much for myself as for her. I just need to touch her right now. Just a little tactile reassurance that she's here, that we made it. She grasps my shirt gently, just holding on. I rest my chin on top of her head, and she gives a little sigh.

Teal'c comes over and looks at us solemnly for a moment. "I will go for the medical team." I nod and he quickly heads back in the direction we came.

One-handed I reach around for my canteen. I manage to get the cap off and hold it to her lips. "Sam, drink some water for me, okay?" She doesn't respond immediately, but then slowly reaches for it. She takes a swallow and hands it back, having done what I asked more for my benefit than for her own, I suspect. She lowers her head back down, resting heavily against my chest. I want to tell her she scared the hell out of me, want to tell her I should have been with her, want to tell her how glad I am we found her. I can sense she's not ready to hear that yet. She's too exhausted right now to function normally, and I squeeze her a little closer to let her know I understand.

"My father?" she eventually utters, her voice hoarse.

"He's fine. Back at the SGC. Pretty worried about you." Teal'c would have let Hammond know they'd found her by now.

She nods and we sit quietly. I'm content just to listen to her breathe. After a while she raises her head and looks at the body behind us. I hunch a shoulder and break her gaze, turning her back toward me, and she settles back against me again without protest. We remain like that until I hear Teal'c's voice and the sound of the medics coming across the stream. "Sam, " I say gently, "the medical team is coming, they're going to help you now, okay?" No response, but she seems to lean into me a bit more, grasps my shirt a little tighter. Something lodges in my throat that makes it difficult for me to speak, but I manage to say, "I'm not going anywhere, I'm right here."

She nods and sniffles a little. Reaction is beginning to set in.

Thank God, I see Janet Fraiser at the head of the team. There's no one I trust more with all things medical, and with Sam.

As she approaches she assesses the situation pretty quickly, and gives me a pointed look before kneeling down next to us. "Sam," she says gently, a hand on Sam's shoulder. "C'mon, honey, I need to look at that leg. Can you get on the stretcher by yourself or do you want some help?" I smile a little at her uncompromising offer. You're getting on that stretcher, one way or the other, missy.

At first it seems Sam hasn't heard her friend, but then she slowly raises her head. "No...no... I can do it." Now that's the Sam I know and..." Best not to go there right now. She moves out of my grasp, and I am surprised how empty it feels.

The stretcher is on the ground so she sort of scoots over to it and lies down, exhausted from the effort. Janet immediately begins examining her. Among other things, she checks her eyes, her cheek, then probes the wound in her leg. I see Sam grimace and a fist clench against the side of the stretcher until the knuckles are white, although she doesn't make a sound. Just as I'm about to reach down and tell Fraiser to let up, to stop hurting Sam, she finishes, and both Sam and I relax. The doc pulls an IV needle and a bag of fluid out of her bag. Ripping open an alcohol pad she swabs Sam's limp forearm and then, before inserting the needle leans over to look Sam in the face. "This is going to hurt a bit, Sam." Sam doesn't respond but I squat down and look questioningly at the doctor. Janet says to me softly, "She's pretty dehydrated."

It alarms me when the doctor puts the needle in Sam's forearm and she doesn't react at all. It must have shown on my face because Janet silently puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder. After wrapping Sam's arm, she takes a syringe from her bag and fills it with a vial of clear liquid. "Sedative," she says. "That leg isn't going to take all the jostling around it's going to get on the way back to the gate. There's still some shrapnel in there." It stuns me then how far Sam has traveled with a leg full of shrapnel. I know she's strong, and adrenalin kicks in during situations like this, but ...

"Sam," she turns back, I'm going to give you something for the pain, okay? Sam nods listlessly and Janet injects the sedative through the IV tube. Janet loosely wraps the leg in bandages, lays the bag of fluid next to Sam and then signals the medics that it's time to go.

On the way back to the gate, I notice Sam keeps finding me with her eyes. I know this because I haven't taken my eyes off her once. I am walking behind the stretcher, and no matter what position I happen to be in, she always finds me. I smile reassuringly at her, and when she doesn't respond I say gruffly, "Hey, aren't you supposed to be asleep by now?" She's fighting the sedative for some reason. I'm rewarded with something akin to a smile, but it quickly turns to a grimace as the medics hit an uneven patch.

"Easy guys!" My voice comes out sharper than I intend.

We're approaching ground zero now, and the sight that meets my eyes causes me to pause. SG-3 has managed to get the gate upright again, but if the view of the blast zone that was once Alpha site isn't bad enough, there are now bodies, lots of them, stacked like cordwood. Geez, our men in body bags, waiting to go through the gate, Tok'ra near a platform they are currently constructing, Jaffa near a newly created pyre... It's staggering.

At that point the medics put the stretcher down briefly to change carriers. It's been a long walk through some pretty rugged terrain. I kneel down next to Sam, who still hasn't succumbed to the drug, and say as softly as I can, "Sam, I want you to do something for me now. In fact, consider this a direct order."

She nods and looks at me, puzzled. "I want you to close your eyes until we get back through the gate, okay? She seems confused until the smoke from the Jaffa fires reaches her nose and she realizes where we are. Then without acknowledgement not only closes her eyes, but throws an arm across them as well. She's one of the strongest people I know, but this is something she's better off not witnessing right now.

When we get back through the gate, I tell Sam she can open her eyes, but she doesn't move. The drug has kicked in. She's finally, peacefully asleep, and that fist in my chest releases me at last.

Fin


End file.
